People For the American Way has just published a new report by Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin which exposes the Tea Party’s dangerously distorted view of the Constitution and core constitutional values. (Is the 14th Amendment the authoritative constitutional source for the nation-defining civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, or is it an illegitimate pretext for an assault on private business owners’ rights and responsibilities?)
With fortuitous timing, Eagle Forum has just sent an activist alert declaring the Constitution to be the central front in the Culture War that America’s “internal enemies” are waging against religion and society. The Eagle Forum “briefing” is one more sign of the Religious Right’s efforts to co-opt the rhetoric of the Tea Party movement for its own Constitution-subverting agendas.
As America enters the year of 2011, new government officials are taking their seats all over the nations, at all levels of government. If our nation is to survive and thrive (neither of which has been happening in recent years), we must all face certain fundamental facts and act accordingly… Three such facts are:
1. America is, and has for decades been, engulfed in the flames of a Culture War;
2. The Constitution has long been a white-hot center of this War and we therefore must Revive the Constitution!;
3. The Courts continue to be the major “weapon of choice” of the forces fighting against the Constitution and the culture in the Culture War.
The Eagle Forum “briefing” quotes rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and other conservative thinkers arguing that the culture war war reflects hostility toward religion and religious institutions, noting that Bork has identified the nation’s internal enemies as “judge-led.”
America’s Culture War can therefore be understood only as a War of Worldviews…. In America’s Culture War, the bitterly opposing worldviews and the constitution theories they advocate may be outlined as followed, with more familiar terms included in parentheses.
Worldviews:
Humanistic (“Pulverize our Foundations”)
v.
Judeo-Christian (“Protect Our Foundations!”)
Humanistic (“Pulverize our Foundations”)
v.
Judeo-Christian (“Protect Our Foundations!”)
Constitution Theories:
Reconstructionists (Activist/Liberal) (“Kill the Constitution”)
v.
Constitutionalists (Restraintist/Conservative) (“Revive the Constitution”)
The Eagle Forum alert concludes that 2011 is a “banner year” to “launch a massive counter-attack to Revive the Constitution.”
